New Delhi: The Gujarat high court imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 on people who had objected to a Hindu man selling his shop to a Muslim man, calling the objections “disturbing,” Bar and Bench has reported.
“It is a disturbing factor that a successful purchaser of property in a disturbed area is being hounded and thwarting his attempt to enjoy the fruits of the property which he successfully purchased,” the single judge on the bench, Justice Biren Vaishnav said.
A Muslim man, according to the report, purchased a shop from a Hindu man in a Vadodara locality identified as “predominantly Hindu.” Petitioners in the case were witnesses who had signed the sale agreement between the two parties in 2020 but who now claimed that they had been coerced to sign them.
The Collector and local police had also objected to the sale, citing that it could affect the “balance” and cause law and order problems.
In 2020, the high court had dismissed these objections. It was when the transaction was supposed to be registered with the sub-registrar that the witnesses said that they had been coerced.
An additional civil application was filed by more than 10 shop owners, whose businesses were beside the Muslim man’s.
In 2021, the Gujarat high court had stopped the state government from declaring any locality a “disturbed area” allowed under Section 3(1)(ii) of the Gujarat Disturbed Areas Act, 1991, stating that it could lead to “improper clustering of persons” from “one community”.
As The Wire has noted earlier, the Gujarat Disturbed Areas Act, 1991, was enacted to arrest inter-area migration resulting from panic sales in the aftermath of the 1985 Ahmedabad riots. While an 1986 legislation in the immediate aftermath of the riots prohibited the transfer of immovable property in “disturbed areas” temporarily, for a specific period of time, the 1991 Act made it a permanent affair. This was further amended in 2020 to add heft to the legislation and allowing for proper and improper “clustering of persons”.